Hey, What Happened to the "Contract With America"?

The Republican Moral Imperative: Blame it on Bill Clinton and the Democrats!
The pagan-religious-commercial holiday around the winter Solstice is over (until the retailers alert us to the next one), so back to the salt mines now. Hey, 2006 can be an exciting year for the politicos among us as we will have an opportunity to restore some checks and balances into our government. I hope the American people are up to this important task. Unfortunately, we will have plenty of scandals and more misteps to keep us busy. This Republican Congress and the Bush administration have set records in efficiency when it comes to ..corruption. Most importantly, however, we must take back our country from the social darwinists, the theologs, and we must throw the lunatic fringe where it belongs--in the margins of our society. This extremist minority has captured the Republican party. But, authoritarian government has a high price: corruption. I can't wait to see how many unworthy politicians are burned by the Abramoff scandal. What a bunch of weasels those Republicans are. Not so long ago, they argued for a "moral imperative" in impeaching President Clinton who lied about his sexual encounters. Of course, now they sit red-faced, praying that all their troubles is just a bad dream. Maybe it is rapture time as trials and tribulations are upon them!

At any rate, I had some spare time these holidays, so I read stuff, here and there, and strangely enough I came upon the "famous" and much talked-about Republican promise in 1994, the Contract with America. Let's see what those Repubs "promised" to do when they'd come to power. [the comments in the brackets are mine; why not start the new year with some fun?]

This is what that "contract" stipulated:

FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress; [ha! I guess they didn't mean the President and the Republican leadership in Congress! The laws shouldn't apply to those who are in charge of the public good, because our leaders need some ..flexibility in order to make us safe and keep us safely ignorant under lock & key]

SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse; [ha, ha! waste?!! No way! Get out of here! Never mind the $8.8 billion missing in Iraq... Most likely, this money has probably fallen between the seat & pillows of our national couch!]

THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third; [unless they needed to add more in order to keep up with the growth of the federal government under Bush 43]

FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs; [what they meant: they can stay only as long as our party is in the majority, that's all... Oh, and remove the "ethics" out of the Ethics Committee]

FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee; [better yet, pass bills without making the members read thousands of pages of ..boring stuff]

SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public; [hahaha! they had you going on this one! Nice try! Actually, just save time & energy by letting the lobbyists write the laws]

SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase; [yes! such a super majority is necessary to safeguard against accidentally raising taxes on the well-off. But, the Repubs can invoke the "nuclear option" and change the rules of the Senate when it comes to other serious matters, like life-time appointments to the US Supreme Court, etc.]

EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting [hahahhahhahahahha.... Who said, they couldn't put more on our national credit card than all the previous governments combined? It sounded like a ..challenge to Bush! Besides, it's not that they would have to pay for the charges themselves...]

The Repubs are capable of producing some nice fiction, which, under the right frame of mind, can be hilarious! Yet, at some point we have to remind ourselves of the sad state of our country as it has been led by the autocratic Republican machine. For the real impact of the "contract with America" in a post-Katrina, Iraq war, scandals, and the law-breaking, read this article in the Nation.

We need a revolt of our own this time, not just for the sake of putting the Dems in control of one or both chambers of Congress, but because we care about the direction of our country. The quality of our democracy and the quality of our lives depend on the quality of the people involved. I seek accountability not only from those who are in power but also from those who elect them. What is the responsibility of the average person? How would this country be different if, say, the individual citizen had more power? Often, we are our worst enemy. The first good step is to be informed and engaged in the affairs of our nation. We have a new year ahead of us, let's make the best of it. See tomorrow as the first day of the rest of our lives. Let's make the future a better place to be in.